Wasted Drugs

NPR reported on the new Propublica investigation into wasted prescription drugs at nursing homes. Millions of dollars of perfectly useful drugs are thrown away every year instead of being recycled. In Iowa, they have a program set up to retrieve these drugs and redistribute them to uninsured or underinsured patients for free. And they’re getting about $5 million worth of these drugs this year.

These drugs, experts say, might be wasting hundreds of millions of dollars a year.